Manolo’s World is an archaeological and ethnographic exploration of a landscape and traditional lifestyle under threat. It examines the structures, fields, history, people and nature of a rugged upland zone of eastern Spain – one away from the chaotic resort expansion of the coasts but one being eroded by local tourism. The survey, undertaken by archaeologists from Leicester and Valencia University and from Denia Ethnographic Museum, investigated the upland region of the Serra de l’Altmirant in the La Safor district, some 30km inland from the coast, between Alicante and Valencia. The Serra landscape comprises a plain enclosed between heights from 623m to 1011m and the exposed slopes of the Vall de Gallinera; it is dotted with corrals, farms, stores, cisterns and terraces now largely abandoned and shrouded in scrub. The fieldwork examines the form, evolution, setting and roles of these varied structures, mapping through these and through ethnographic study the history and character of upland exploitation through time.

As well as a prehistoric and medieval exploitation of the slopes and wooded spaces, the survey principally revealed the dramatic colonisation of upland space from lowland villages in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth century. Population and economic pressure forced change on these rural communities, necessitating more substantive exploitation of the rugged limestone slopes; what emerges is a fascinating interplay between people and nature, characterised especially by the network of carefully set farms and terraces. The patterns of early modern farming, shepherding and natural resource management in this marginal context are explored, using especially the knowledge of locals such as Manolo, the last full-time shepherd and resident of the Serra. The expansion of holiday homes and tarmac roads is eroding and concealing this tangible pre-modern landscape and the survey provides a coherent record of this.